"One of the first product we launch [based on the Piledriver core] will be Trinity; we have not released an official launch date yet, but it will happen [very] early in the year," said Thomas Seifert, chief financial officer of Advanced Micro Devices, during the latest conference call with financial analysts.

AMD’s second-generation code-named Trinity APU for mainstream personal computers (Comal for notebooks and Virgo for desktops) will be made using 32nm SOI HKMG process technology at Globalfoundries. The APU will feature up to four x86 cores powered by enhanced Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture, AMD Radeon HD 7000-series "Southern Islands" graphics core with DirectX 11-class graphics support, DDR3 memory controller and other improvements. The chips will be compatible with new FM2 infrastructure.

According to a slide that resembles those from AMD's presentations published by a web-site, AMD projects Trinity's Piledriver x86 cores to offer up to 20% higher performance compared to Husky x86 cores inside Llano. In addition, the newly-architected DirectX 11 graphics core will provide up to 30% higher speed in graphics applications, such as video games. The 20% speed improvement represents AMD's projections "using digital media workload" and actual performance advantage over currently available Fusion A-series "Llano" vary depending on the applications and usage models. It is unclear whether AMD used an early silicon (which it has at hands) for its projections or makes its predictions based on theoretical data.

AMD expects the new Trinity APUs to be not only faster than Llano, but also more available because of improved yields as well as because increased number of 32nm SOI/HKMG wafer starts starting from the fourth quarters.

"Clearly, we were disappointed with the execution around the yields in the 32nm space, and that occurred over a sustained period of time. [...] We are making progress and we're focused on it every single day, and we are seeing progress. But again, we are focused at a machine-by-machine levels, step by step, and trying to improve [...] our total yields across the board. [...] We have work to do in the execution space, and while we are making progress, we need to continue that progress. I think we are seeing that steady improvement and step by step, machine by machine, we will make that progress in 32nm. We will shift significantly more 32 nanometer product in the fourth quarter than we did in third quarter," Rory Read, the recently appointed chief executive officer of AMD, told the analysts.

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some people think the problem just lies in the cashe its to slow and it might not have the same clok as the cores. if trinity cashe is faster than it will preform like phenom/core. there is yet a lot of optimising to be done and programming for 8< cores.

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The problem does not lie in the cache, it is the design idea behind Bulldozer. Shared resources for the execution cores is a great idea for affordable server CPUs, but it does not work so well in the consumer market because most consumer applications don't utilize above four execution cores and what AMD tried to do was cram in as much cores as possible with the die space they had to work with. Sharing resources among execution cores (except for CPU caches) is an ineffecient use of die space and imposes performance penatlies using applications compared to dedicated resources. Although you are correct, applications do need to be optimized for Bulldozer so we can see better performance results.

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Wait, wasn't that the reason Core2 was better than Athlon X2? Because the 2 cores were sharing resources? Or, isn't hyperthreading the reason Intel is faster than AMD, because of the even more-so shared resources? AMD is doing things Intel has done and still does, they're just aiming a bit more towards Core2 than Sandy Bridge.

Seriously, the cache problem probably has a lot to do with the areas AMD is losing(and maybe also in the areas they're WINNING), but it may be things like cache-thrashing, etc... and cache latency to a much lesser extent. Some cache problems might cost 50-100 clock cycles or more to recover from.

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Shared resources for the execution cores is a great idea for affordable server CPUs, but it does not work so well in the consumer market because most consumer applications don't utilize above four execution cores

which is where the turbo comes in.

yield issues are preventing bulldozer from clocking as high as it should, both the base clock as the turbo clock.
and the scheduler issues don't help either.

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3.

AMD is in very good shape with it's ultra mobile market. Intel has no answer to compete with AMD's ultra moble market. The Atom is anything but competitive. It's already way behind Llano in performance and graphics and Trinity will just add further insult to injury.

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4.

Read well knows that Intel going faster to the mobile CPUs, Ultrabooks and etc. There is one very purpose for Intel. Making its On-Die graphics better and better and the very strong weapon of Intel -such always- is nanometers. So AMD HAS TO faster their move for mobile targets before Intel get more chances day-by-day.

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well then intel is failing to deliver on the nm advantage in terms of graphics.
GPU increase in performance up to 50% with a half-node die shrink.
yet intel will manages only a 30% increase with the full node shrink in ivy bridge.
AMD adds the same 30% on the same process, and they were way ahead of intel to begin with.

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6.

Remember that on a home consumer level, what you chaps want inside your desktop computers in the USA is not necessarily what they're after in China. AMD's product market is now 50/50 in these two countries - that is to say that it is growing strongly in China (the Chinese computer market grew by 15% last year and is now larger than the USA overall). AMD's plan to produce "better value" server chips than Intel and to also produce strong "all-round" consumer chips (good processor + good graphics) for the Chinese market is an excellent strategy. Promotion of Rory Read to CEO at AMD is in order to help the company gain more traction in the Chinese market through his strong corporate links with Lenovo, the biggest computer maker and supplier in China. I hold a large number of shares in AMD because I believe its growth prospect, along with the Chinese computer market, is enormous.